Andrew “Chop” Hunter

Increasing performance though optimising the trade-off between speed and accuracy

MScOrganisational Psychology (2003-2004), The University of Queensland

BPsychHonours (2002), The University of Queensland

Research History & Interests

It all started this day, 38 years ago when I popped out of my beloved mother to pee all over the doctor – thus started my love of science. My fondness for animals was hindered as a kid due to my parents only allowing budgies as a pet – they are rubbish pets. I dunno how I got to studying Psych at uni, it just seemed to happen. After 6 years of faffing, I somehow ended up with a Masters in Organisational Psych which led me to a boring HR career – short lived.

Since my brain was dying from boredom, I escaped to Canada for 3 years of snowboarding, mtn-biking & climbing. Here, I developed a green thumb in my favourite working holiday job as a land-sculpturer. At some point, I thought I should start being a real human, so I returned to Australia with no real plan. Many a beer and BBQs later in Robbie’s front yard, numerous white-board assisted musings led to my birth into the Wilson Cult – doing a soccer PhD in the biology school, WTF?

Basically I setup little penalty shoot-out competitions where the goalkeeper and shooter compete against each other for a pot of cold hard cash, film it in high-speed, then measure a whole lot of variables like shot speed, accuracy, deception & keeper behavior. With this data I am building a mathematical model that will identify the perfect strategy for both the shooter and keeper. Its pretty fun when “data collection” is hanging out with your mates talking smack to each other.

When I’m not PhD-ing, I’m up on Groote Eylandt being Gwen’s side kick in the Dust & Health study. Hopefully I will catch a giant birthday fish today….see below photo of the outcome…